I love fairytales. Who doesn’t? Fantastical characters and creatures, in a fantastical world, bound – or not – by fantastical rules. Magic is prevalent, sometimes helpful and sometimes dangerous. People will often pop up, say something critical but cryptic, then disappear, never to be seen again, leaving our hero (or, more often, heroine) to ponder that over until the exact right situation occurs where the tidbit becomes useful. And that’s another thing, you will find yourself with so many female characters in fairytales. Sure, some are conniving queens or princesses in need of being rescued, or witches with tempers and bad social skills, but they are women doing things, and so help me, I love it. So keeping all of this in mind, it probably doesn’t surprise you that when I went out and immediately bought a copy of Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making before I’d even finished reading my library copy. (Do I even have to say it? Spoilers to follow…)

Like this:

Hey, kids! I know it’s been awhile, but for that while, all round-ups would have been “I am reading the Stephanie Plum series” (that didn’t stop me from updating when I was reading nothing but Charlaine Harris, I am aware). But let’s do a quick run-down of the things I’m reading, shall we? For old times’ sake.

Sacre Bleu, Christopher Moore – The lives of artists in Paris in the 1890’s, told in Moore’s irreverent style. I remember the day my friend Greg pushed Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, on me, and I was hooked by the ridiculous humor and surprising amount of heart. I, in turn, pushed Chris Moore on my dad, and now he’s read all of them, while I’m only halfway through the catalog. He insisted that Bleu was one of his best yet, really coming around to very emotional, adult writing, and though I’m only a few pages in, I’d have to agree.

Plum Lovin’, Janet Evanovich – Don’t judge me! I’ve worked my way through the numbered series, leaving me with this “between the numbers” stuff, which isn’t as good and has a few elements of the supernatural, which doesn’t really fit with the tone of the series.

Things I’ve finished include:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin – Although this is apparently the first in a trilogy, I feel it can end where it ended, no problem. The story of gods punished by other gods to live among humans and be their slaves, and the measures they take to free themselves. It is, to paraphrase our heroine, a battle amongst two stubborn and screwed-up families.

Codename Sailor V (vol. 1), Naoko Takeuchi – I’m an unabashed Sailormoon nerd, so you can imagine my delight/frustration that they were going to rerelease the manga series with a more accurate translation, and that this rerelease was going to include the Sailor V prequel, which I’ve owned (in Japanese) but never read (because it’s in Japanese). It’s as much fun as you can have with a middle school girl granted magic powers by a talking cat, who then fights crime. I mean that as a compliment.

I promise I haven’t abandoned everyone forever. I’ve got a few things in the works, at lot of books about which I have a lot of feelings.